Can We Abolish Nuclear Weapons Before We Abolish War?

In 2011, people across the planet reached out to Japan in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami. Millions watched as one nation after another rose in mass revolutions across the Arab world. The Occupy movement blossomed, as citizens in cities around the globe expressed rage over the excesses of capitalism and corporate power. And Time magazine named “The Protester” its annual Person of the Year.

The world has never been smaller. Citizen movements increasingly demonstrate their limitless promise. So, think it sounds too dreamy to imagine that someday people power might transform our small world into one world — a federal republic of the Earth?

Tad Daley is the author of Apocalypse Never: Forging the Path to a Nuclear Weapon-Free World (Rutgers University Press), just released in paperback. He is currently working on a new book about the history and future of the ancient dream that something like a world republic could serve as the solution to the problem of war.

About

We sniff out issues hiding in the foreign-policy forest and haul them back to the laboratory for inspection. We examine the anterior, posterior, and underside of an issue, as well as its shadows.

This blog provides a commentator with an opportunity to express his or her convictions more forcefully than may be appropriate for an article. If you have unique insight into a foreign-policy (or affairs) issue, please feel free to write a post and send it to editor Russ Wellen at [email protected]